Graft versus host diseases: new versions of old problems?

Graft-versus-host disease or graft-versus-host-like syndrome.

Graft Versus Host Disease

Commonly referred to as GVHD, graft-versus-host disease is a man-made condition that arises when patients are transplanted with donor tissue that is not identical to their own. Transplants from other individuals are called allogeneic (‘allo’ meaning ‘other’ and ‘geneic’ referring to ‘genes’). GVHD occurs after hematopoietic stem cell or bone marrow transplantation but is most commonly experienc...

Graft versus Host Disease

Definition Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is the most common complication of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). In HSCT, the patient’s bone marrow is destroyed with chemotherapy and/or radiation and replaced by donor hematopoietic stem cells. In allogeneic HSCT the donor is usually a close family member or occasionally someone outside the family who has been found to b...

Graft-versus-host disease and graft-versus-leukemia.

Allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) remains the treatment of choice for a number of malignant conditions. Much of the therapeutic potential of this procedure for these diseases relates to the graft-versusleukemia (GVL) effect, which eradicates host malignancy after BMT and is mediated by donor T and natural killer (NK) cells (1). GVL effects are closely associated, however, with graft-...

Host genetics of infectious diseases: old and new approaches converge.

The increasing interest in infectious disease genetics over the last 5 years reflects several trends in the biomedical sciences, not least the explosion of knowledge in human genomics. However, infectious disease genetics is not a new field; some of the largest twin studies were performed more than 50 years ago, and the first malaria resistance gene was identified soon afterwards. The current e...